


Cowgirls Don't Cry

by oonaseckar



Category: RENAULT Mary - Works, The Friendly Young Ladies - Mary Renault
Genre: 2015 UK General Election, Conservative victory, Cowboys & Cowgirls, Daisy Dukes, Defeat, F/F, F/M, General Election, Green Party, Politics, RenaultX Election Collection, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 14:36:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3899881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helen is a Green candidate in the 2015 UK General Election.  The defeat is crushing, and the disappointment is a bit gutting.  She goes for a walk by the canal to get away from her well-meaning supporters, and encounters a strange young woman in a cowboy hat, and the young man and little sister she lives with in a narrowboat...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cowgirls Don't Cry

**Author's Note:**

> This is in the nature of a fix-it for Elsie. Who would have a very different persona as a 21st century teenager, one feels. Even if still every bit as annoying.
> 
> Molesworth reference. Title from the Brooks and Dunn song of the same name.
> 
> RenaultX 2015 Election Challenge!

The Greens get trashed in Helen's constituency, _trashed._ It's the first time she's stood for election, and if she's honest then she's a little crushed. Friends and former lovers and family and party workers – well, the party workers largely fall into the first three groups – spend the portion of the night they're awake trying to comfort her, as well as each other. Other than that they doze and drink and collapse in glum somnolent heaps on her living room chairs. 

In the morning she wakes up, not in her comfortable bed, but in an armchair, in an over-populated house. There are too many people too ready to commiserate with her, and she feels the need to get away from them. Fortuitously she has the morning free from her temp gig teaching at the local art college – which could have been so easily discarded if only her dreams had come true, but now she'd better start looking for something more reliable. She has a mortgage and several highly discriminating gourmand cats to consider.

It's a beautiful sunlit morning, and a very glum walk just the same. She goes down by the old canal, and she barely pays any attention to her surroundings. Feeling sorry for herself isn't something she does very often. Her skills are thus not highly perfected. She's going to have to work on it a bit, to reach her normal expected standards of excellence, in everything she attempts.

She must have been walking in a daze, because being addressed from the direction of the canal, as she mopes along, startles her properly. “Hello, beautiful,” is what she hears, loud and friendly. When she jumps around, her interlocutor is smiling at her.

It's a young woman, sitting on the cabin of the narrow-boat that Helen had been passing without even noting its existence. (And she's rather keen on boats, too.) 

It's quite a unique young woman, going by her outfit. Ten a.m. on a Friday morning – in a bleak industrial UK city – by a canal – and she's wearing... daisy dukes. Sequined daisy dukes – silver sequins. They look rather nice on her, as a matter of fact. Considering it's still only early summer, she's quite tanned, and barefoot and smooth-skinned, slim and pretty-ish. Well, perhaps a little consciously boyish, fair hair buzzed up almost to the scalp at the sides, with a long floppy fringe falling in blue-green eyes. 

Not that Helen can see much of her hair anyway. The cowboy hat – not sequinned – gets in the way. It's a look. It's definitely a look. She clears her throat. “Hello, cowgirl,” she says. And the girl laughs, slow and easy.

“You got me. Well, Miss Vaughan, I commiserate with you on the results just in for the local ward.” Helen's surprised at the recognition for a moment – as a Green candidate she's hardly a local celebrity. Then familiar colours and formatting catch at the corner of her eye, and her glance strays to the window of the cabin. It's pasted over with her own campaign posters, a bright and hopeful smile on her face and exhortations about a bright future above her. All ready for the custard pie in the face.

Still, it's nice to meet a supporter, especially this morning. “I take it I can rely on your vote, at least?”

Cowgirl doesn't answer, because someone else beats her to it. The window of the cabin abruptly slides open with an ungreased squeal, and a black-haired teenager manages to get her head and shoulders right out, to glare at them both. It's a rather impressive feat, like a mouse squeezing and deforming its skeleton to escape through a hole a few centimetres wide. There isn't really space, and yet she's managed it, barring getting stuck. Her black straight tresses hang down past the gay green oil-paint of the planking, fairly clearly owing more to L'Oréal than to nature. Her eyeliner is an amateur job, but compensates in oodles of enthusiasm what it's missing in subtlety.

“It isn't Leo who voted for you,” she says, addressing Helen, and making use of a tone that suggests, very much, _as any fule kno._ “It's Joe. And I put up the poster. Leo is a horrible cynic and layabout. She'll be no use at all to you, saving the world. She was out clubbing last night, while we were watching the election results.”

Helen mentally tucks away this useful bit of intel for future reference. She's finding Cowgirl – Leo – quite noticeable. It might be necessary. But she's lost the gothic gargoyle's attention, for the minute. She's looking off down the canal-path, and like a snake she wriggles a hand out to wave. “And here's Joe. Haroo, ahoy!” she shrieks out, and ducks back inside the cabin abruptly.

Helen feels she can be excused for feeling just slightly disconcerted. Meeting Cowgirl's gaze, the girl pushes her hat back on her head, and smiles. “My little sister. Can't live with 'em, can't shove 'em in the canal. Or so Mum claims. Elsie disapproves of me,” she says. “I'm not earnest enough. Or I don't explain how earnest I am continuously. And how terrible everything is.”

“Some things are pretty bad,” Helen says, keeps it light though. It gets her an interrogative look.

“Like your morning, I suppose,” Leo says. “You've been walking off your disappointment? Why don't you come and take the edge off with us, join us on the old tub?” And she holds up the beer that's sitting next to her on the boat-cabin roof. A little early, perhaps. It's an extra-special bad day, though. Has been up until now anyhow. For the whole country.

They're not alone any more, as she havers on the brink of decision. This 'Joe' that Elsie the young Munster was greeting, he jogs up to the boat, jumps over the chain fencing and stops in front of them. A handsome youngish guy, blond and nice and sturdy, everything Helen likes normally. She can't focus her attention on him that well.

But his attention is all focused, and his slightly puzzled look resolves and clears, as he surges forward with a hand outstretched. “Helen Vaughan! We've been following your campaign! I voted for you last night, and I'm only sorry that it didn't do more good... but perhaps – ”

“I just invited Helen aboard,” Leo interjects, cutting across his enthusiasm ruthlessly. “I think she should drink her disappointment away with us. Elsie will be a fantastic counter-irritant.” She waggles her bottle at him, and sets her hat back at a still jauntier angle. It's about to drop off her head any minute. 

Helen really ought to get back: to her house, to campaign headquarters, to all the calls and texts and emails that are going to reinforce, like a hammer on a nail, the nastiest failure of her life so far. On the other hand, Joe turns back to her from Leo's words, and smiles. It's warm and welcoming, and what's more it's someone who believes in her. Leo waggles her beer bottle enticingly, with her eyebrows raised and her knees tucked under her chin. It's sassy, and unpredictably come-hither, and it puts the kibosh on good intentions. 

A couple of hours later, round the other side of the boat under the midday sun, Leo kisses her while Joe is in the galley getting more beers, and Elsie is working on a tan that's mostly a livid selection from the pinker bits of a watercolour box. “You and Joe...?” Helen says, when Leo gives her a minute and breath and time to think, draws back enough for them to look at each other. 

Leo puts her hat on Helen's head, tying the strings, mouth twitchy with amusement. “What about it?” She kisses Helen's cheek, now. “He's fine. We can both make you feel better. You've had a rough twenty-four hours. The country has suffered a crushing blow.”

Helen, though. Helen rises from the ashes like a phoenix.


End file.
